Vicki Miles-LaGrange, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, is a woman of many firsts. Appointed to the federal bench in 1994, she was the first African-American federal judge in the six states of the Tenth Circuit (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming). In 1993, she became the first female United States Attorney in Oklahoma, and was among the first in the nation.

      She was the first African-American woman elected to the Oklahoma State Senate. She served as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and also chaired the Law and Justice Committee of the National Conference of State Legislators.

      A product of Oklahoma City public schools, where both her parents were teachers, Judge Miles-LaGrange graduated with honors from Bishop McGuiness High School. She attended Vassar College, graduating cum laude, and received a certificate from the University of Ghana. She earned her law degree from Howard University School of Law, and was an editor of the Howard Law Journal.

      During law school, Miles-LaGrange was a Congressional Aide for the late Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Carl Albert. Following graduation, she clerked for U.S. District Judge Woodrow Seals in Houston. Later, as a Criminal Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, she prosecuted Nazi war criminals.

      As a member of the federal bench, Judge Miles-LaGrange served on the International Judicial Relations Committee, and was appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist to chair the Committee's Africa Working Group. Her work has taken her to Rwanda, Russia, Kenya, China and Brazil.

      Judge Miles-LaGrange has received numerous awards, including an honorary Doctor of Laws from the Oklahoma City University School of Law. She has been inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma African-American Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Child Advocate’s Hall of Fame, and the Mid-America Education Hall of Fame. To call her active in the community is an understatement. She tutors third graders in a faith-based program called “Whiz Kids” and is the Midwest Regional Director of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first and oldest college based sorority founded by African-American women in 1908.

      Judge Miles-LaGrange loves to be with her family and friends: her parents, Charles and Mary Miles; daughter Johnna Marie Watts, and her husband Jimmie; granddaughters Cheyenne, Samantha and Maysen; sister Gayle Miles-Scott; niece Brittany Couch, and her husband Sean; and grandnephew Atticus.

      Please give a warm Rotary Club of Edmond welcome to our special guest, Chief Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange.

Andy